If you are using this free ads site to post your classified ads, you might want to follow these 12 ubiquitous tips to reduce useless and inexhaustible spam congesting your inbox.

1. Do not use your primary email address to register for forums, newsgroups, and other types of registration sites. Instead, use a pseudo email address when registering/posting. Thousands of automated systems (“spambots”) are specifically programmed to crawl a website and search for the “@” symbol, and then the accompanying email address is harvested. Before you know it, your email is placed on hundreds of those annoying mailing lists.

2. I have committed this error and lived to regret it. Do not unsubscribe to a spammer’s mailing list. All you are doing is confirming an active email address.  Simply delete the email and flag it as spam.  Hopefully, you will help save others a big headache.

3. Personally, I do not participate in this type of activity, but I noticed a lot of people find it entertaining.  Forwarding chain emails, usually with hundreds of email addresses in the “to” or “cc” fields is a spammer’s delight. Sharing is great, but it should be done with security of personal information in mind — think bcc or do not do it at all. Not to keep rambling on, but this practice also adds to an already congested Internet.

4. Make an image of your email address because it makes it harder to harvest your information. I have also used other variations such as support “@”  or “AT”whateverwhateverwhateverqqq.com. Note: “support,” “service”, “info”, “admin”, “webmaster”, “press” are common email aliases.  Spambots are aware of these common aliases and are adapting their programs to mine the “@”, “AT”, (at), “A T”, “DOT”, etc. variations.

5. Use a SPAM filter. If you are using hosted services, ask your web host provider to add or allow you to access their existing SPAM filtering program. Most major web host providers provide these programs at no extra cost. I have used a Perl-based SpamAssassin.

6. Use a Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart or “CAPTCHA.”  I have used this device on a couple of my sites and it has reduced automated spamming significantly.

7. Check out a web site’s privacy policy. They may be harvesting personal information for profit, so determine what you are getting yourself into before committing your information. Do they even have a privacy policy?

8. When you register for a service, be sure to note whether you are “automatically” being enrolled to receive other offers. Normally, the site you register for will have you “checked” to receive offers from their sponsors. Pay attention to this important detail.

9. A few years ago I sent an email to a technical acquaintance that was in HTML format, not in plain text.  He was a bit miffed. Many spammers use HTML mail to track downloads linked to a graphic file. If  the graphic is downloaded, the spammer is instantly notified that you viewed the offer and now has a confirmed email address. Turn off HTML mail and view emails in plain text.

10.  This should be a no-brainer. Your IT departments have undoubtedly told you about viruses and not to open suspicious looking emails, especially their attachments. Opening up these infected emails could wipe out your hard drive or worse your employer’s hard drives – Ouch, pink slip!  Some of these viruses could send messages to everyone in your address book and thus causing more chaos. If you do not know the sender, it is probably safe to delete it. But if you insist on taking the risk or are too curious for your own good, at least scan your emails for viruses.

11. Most legitimate companies will never request personal information such as account numbers, social security numbers, user names or passwords in email messages or pop-up windows. If you get this type of email, more than likely it is a phishing attempt (e.g. 419 Scammers). Note legitimate concerns will mention in their online statements or their own emails that they never request personal information online.

12. How do you report suspicious emails? Forward a copy of the message to Google so they can investigate. Send the message to: spoof “A_removeme_T” google.com. If you are a Google Mail user, report the message as phishing with the link provided in the message header.

Thank you for taking the time to read these tips. Now, do not forget to post your free classifieds at FreeAdLists.com. I would suggest not displaying your email address in your free classified ads so be sure to use the anonymous email feature.